Calm Before the ...

... Shelter from the Storm?

Well, I'm about as ready as it's possible for me to be at this moment. You do have to realize that I don't have everything done for tomorrow. I'm not hard-wired with an 'early' gene. Before I head for bed tonight, I'll be 99% ready, but there will certainly be something forgotten on the list. *chuckle*

It has been an interesting journey to this point. Waaaaaaaaay outside my comfort zone for most of the trek. For a time, it felt as though I was a 'voice crying in the wilderness'. My heart recognized a need for our community to worship together, and others would agree with me when I brought it up, but that's all the further the conversation would go.

I came mighty close to capitulating (at several points, actually). That is, until Ron Franscell showed up at the church office bearing a book: In the Wake of Disaster:Religious Responses to Terrorism & Catastrophe by Harold G. Koenig, M.D. Thanks, Ron!! The chapters in that book affirmed that feeling in my heart that kept poking and prodding me to pursue an Interfaith worship service.

With a vote from the Southeast Texas Interfaith Organization for Disaster Recovery approving pursuit of such a venture, I began to gather a committee to bring things into being. *chuckle* I'm not sure that throughout the process we ever had the exact same group of people involved. At times it's been much like herding cats being chased by dogs. God works in mysterious ways. We've always had the right people at the right time, though.

There has been a wonderful, creative core group present, pulling ideas together to make the experience a healing and helpful event. It's hard to put into words the beautiful things which have happened as we've worked together over the past few months.

We've run into a variety of obstacles along the way, even up to yesterday. What worthwhile goal doesn't? I told someone yesterday that the devil's been nipping at our heels all along the way, and each time I thought we'd land on our keisters, some miracle has arrived out of nowhere to keep us on our feet.

I'm still in 'how on earth did I get here?' mode. A certain level of bullheaded and stubbornness is part of it; however, it's somewhat uncharacteristic for me. Well, not the bullheaded and stubborn part really, but the taking on of a fairly visible role in a project which could involve people from 3 counties and culminate in an event that might have thousands of people attending. I've never done anything like this before. Scary stuff!

So was the publicity part of it. Let's see... I've now done a live radio show and Live at 5 (no taping to fall back on ACK!) and survived. Would prefer not to do that again. *chuckle* ahhhhhhhh, growth. I have certainly been stretched by this experience.

And here we sit. It's Saturday evening. There's some thunder rumbling, and it rained just a bit ago. (Ok, God! Let's send that stuff someplace else for tomorrow!) In completely uncharacteristic manner, I'm not on tenterhooks at this moment. Not sure whether that's a good thing or not. Who knows what I'll be like tomorrow?

I'm just going to do what I've been doing all along - trust that God's been in the midst of this and it will be blessed whatever the outcome! Now I'm off to put the finishing touches to tomorrow morning's worship service (yep! still have that to do, too!). Later, all!